Survivor Biography

Dark skies and barbed wire fences were all Bluma Plaskovsky saw as she stepped down from the train onto the main platform of Auschwitz-Birkenau. After surviving the Wehrmacht’s decimation of her hometown, Bluma and what remained of her family were finally put on the long, harsh train ride through inhuman conditions that seemed to last an eternity.

Follow the winding path of a Jewish refugee turned US Army interrogator who ends up processing Nazi scientists during WWII. Fred Michel was a teenager when he escaped Nazi Germany with his family. When war broke out, he was drafted and trained at Camp Ritchie, a high level intelligence center. He ended up at an obscure fort along the Potomac River known only as P.O. Box 1142.

Much has been written about the brutal crimes of Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, and - 35 years after he was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of 13 women - scarcely a week goes by without some mention of him in the media. In any story featuring Sutcliffe, however, his victims are incidental, often reduced to a tableau of nameless faces. But each woman was much more than the manner of her death, and in Somebody’s Mother, Somebody’s Daughter, Carol Ann Lee tells, for the first time, the stories of those women who came into Sutcliffe’s murderous orbit.

After three years as a killing-field slave, seventeen-year-old Bun Yom escaped from the Khmer Rouge and became a freedom fighter. Using his wisdom, courage, and infinite compassion, Bun rescued thousands of Cambodian people and soon became the Cambodian Freedom Fighters’ greatest soldier. Tomorrow I’m Dead is the only known first-person account of the freedom fighter’s heroic liberation of slaves from the Khmer Rouge killing fields.

Born into a Hassidic Jewish family in Poland in 1924, Mendek grew up surrounded by extreme anti-Semitism. Armed with an ingenious mind, he survived three horrific years in Nazi slave-labor concentration camps while virtually his entire family was murdered in Auschwitz. After arriving in America in 1946 — despite having no money or professional skills — his inventions helped revolutionize both the jewelry and packaged-salad industries. Remarkably, Mendek also applied his ingenuity to his own psyche, developing innovative ways to heal his heart and end his emotional suffering.

December 1944, whilst heavy snows fall over Budapest and soldiers battle for the streets, Georgina, a young Jewish woman, is nearly starving to death with her newborn son. The battle outside is one of the most savage in the entire war. She knows that to go into the streets is virtually a death sentence or rape, but she must find food within the next few hours, or her baby will certainly die. For Georgina, there is no choice. Alone and completely vulnerable, she heads out into the freezing cold.

When Leosz was only six, his life changed completely. World War II broke out in 1939, sweeping the young boy into the whirlwind of the holocaust. For six long torturous years, Leosz sees and goes through everything: myriads of overcrowded transports headed for concentration camps, life on the streets of occupied Poland as an abandoned child, hiding from cruel Nazis, forced labor under conditions of starvation, and the constant threat of death.

Testimonios de sobrevivientes y secuestradores. El secuestro en México es un delito que ha revolucionado y crecido de forma voraz: lo mismo destroza la vida de personas millonarias que de hombres y mujeres con escasos recursos.

The stories of Sinti and Roma suffering in Nazi Germany are all too often lost or untold. In this haunting account, Otto shares his story with a remarkable simplicity. Deeply moving, A Gypsy in Auschwitz is the incredible story of how a young Sinti boy miraculously survived the unimaginable darkness of the Holocaust.

Leia Hughey courageously peels through layers of vulnerabilities and fears to bare herself to her listeners. A victim of rape as a child, the author suffered from its psychological effects... low self-esteem and self-hatred throughout her life, even though all recollection of the trauma was repressed from her conscious memory. It wasn't until she was in college that the memories began to slowly and heartbreakingly work their way to the surface through dreams and flashbacks.

This is the story of a girl raised into exploitation who wakes up one night, when she is 14, in the middle of the hardcore porn industry. Faced with the worst version of herself on the screen before her, in a moment of shattering light, Jewell must decide if she will continue going with the flow or if she will fight to become a better version of herself.

Alexander Rosenberg was a smart and curious teenager who spoke many languages, and lived a pampered life with his parents in a tranquil Czechoslovakian town. The rise of fascism and Nazi Germany causes his protected existence to collapse, alongside the illusion of secular Jewish assimilation in 1930s Europe. Using their last reserves of wealth and influence to escape extermination, the Rosenbergs go underground to avoid the Gestapo. Eventually exposed, captured, and taken to Buchenwald, the largest concentration camp in Germany, Alexander and his father collaborate to survive one day at a time

After a 25-year career spent fighting for women's rights around the globe at the expense of time with her family, Karen Sherman looked around and realized she didn't really know her children and felt little connection to her husband. With her world - work, marriage, family - crashing down, she made the rash decision to move to Rwanda with her three sons, an experiment she dubbed "our year of living dangerously".

When he first met the man who called himself David Koresh, David Thibodeau was a drummer in a local a rock band. Though he had never been religious in the slightest, Thibodeau gradually became a follower and moved to the Branch Davidian compound in Waco. He remained there until April 19, 1993, when the compound was stormed and burned to the ground after a 51-day standoff with government authorities. In this compelling account - now with an updated epilogue that revisits remaining survivors - Thibodeau explores why so many people came to believe that Koresh was divinely inspired.

Based on the true story of her mother, Mona Golabek describes the inspirational story of Lisa Jura's escape from Nazi-controlled Austria to England on the famed Kindertransport. Jewish musical prodigy Lisa Jura has a wonderful life in Vienna. But when the Nazis start closing in on the city, life changes irreversibly. Although he has three daughters, Lisa's father is only able to secure one berth on the Kindertransport. The family decides to send Lisa to London so that she may pursue her dreams of a career as a concert pianist.

In April 2018, seasoned adventurer Ben Fogle and Olympic cycling gold medallist Victoria Pendleton, along with mountaineer Kenton Cool, took on their most exhausting challenge yet – climbing Everest for the British Red Cross to highlight the environmental challenges mountains face. It would be harrowing and exhilarating in equal measure as they walked the fine line between life and death 8,000 metres above sea level.

One survivor chooses loneliness. One chooses exile. One chooses oblivion. Some have violent tendencies, ruining lives indiscriminately. Some seal their own fate in slow motion; others do so in the blink of an eye. Award-winning true-crime writer Steve Braunias retells twelve mysteries of human nature—unusual stories of how people choose to survive their own lives, and their decisions, desires, impulses... and failings.

In the spring of 1621, Plymouth Colony sent Stephen Hopkins to make the first visit to Wampanoag sachem Massasoit to present a red horsemans coat as a gift and sign of friendship. For most ordinary Englishmen, venturing off into the depths of unexplored America would have been a once in a lifetime adventure - but not for Stephen.

Was it My Fault? is intended to offer solace and guidance to those ensnared in toxic relationships, dispelling the notion that abuse is solely physical. Inspiring self-discovery, healing, and empowerment, Alana offers a testament to the resilience of the human spirit, a rallying cry for survivors to reclaim their narrative—urging them not just to survive, but to thrive.

Nate Leipciger, a thoughtful, shy eleven-year-old boy, is plunged into an incomprehensible web of ghettos, concentration and death camps during the German occupation of Poland. Demonstrating incredible strength of character as he struggles to survive, he forges a new, unbreakable bond with his father and yearns for a free future. With memories that remain etched in tragedy and pain even as he looks optimistically to the future, Nate builds a new life in Canada.